"If you want to know how good a player you are, you get on a plane and fly to the southern hemisphere. Pretty soon you'll find out." These are not my words but those of a former Lion, John Spencer, and spoken in Dublin this week.

We were there with the Lions management, coaches and committee from last summer reviewing the South Africa tour, working out what went well, what could have been improved and seeing how Australia in three years can be made even better. I'm not giving secrets away but I bet Ian McGeechan will be involved and I understand from those negotiating future contracts that, after those seven weeks in South Africa and particularly after the win in that final Test in Johannesburg, there will be no problem sorting the deals for tours to come. Everyone, it seems, wants to play the Lions.

However, that is not why Spencer's words matter or why they have been rattling around in my head ever since I heard them. It is because he unwittingly gave the definitive answer to a question I have heard posed a couple of times recently: "Why is Martin Johnson taking 44 players to Australia?"

What Spencer was saying was that, if you are planning for the future, you need to see the future put under pressure and Australia, New Zealand and South Africa is where you get it. Forget the Churchill Cup. It is nice but does not cut the mustard. What does is being involved in a proper tour playing mid-week sides like Australia A in places like Townsville, Queensland, where they have a bit of attitude and have probably travelled for a day or more to see rugby red in tooth and claw. Or the New Zealand Maori, sensing blood on a filthy Wednesday night in Dunedin.

However the problem has been that teams other than the Lions do not tour like that any longer. Or they did not. For them the quick hit became fashionable; in and out with no proper warm-up and no time to see the country and its people. But no longer. First England announced an extended tour and now the international board wants to go back to what it calls "old style" rugby tours.

Almost the first tour timetable to be announced after the Lions returned from South Africa was England's itinerary for Australia and New Zealand containing midweek matches against Australia Barbarians in Perth and Gosforth – before the Tests in Perth and Sydney – and NZ Maori in Napier. Then this week South Africa announced they will play England in a three-Test series in 2012.

That series will be the first lengthy tour of South Africa by a single nation since a similar three-Test series against New Zealand in 1996 and the Springboks also plan three-Test series against France and Ireland.

"Everyone in rugby has been yearning for a return to old style tours and the IRB has now been able to deliver," said the South African rugby president, Oregan Hoskins, making the announcement before adding: "We experience the drama that a proper tour delivers every time the British & Irish Lions appear and both the tourists and the host nations in the southern hemisphere were keen to see this change."

Well, it is nice to do something right. And if Mr Hoskins is in the market for more advice, I would suggest that seven weeks is just about the right length of tour. I once did 10 weeks with Tests in Papua New Guinea and New Zealand either side of three in Australia and was practically dead for the last two games. Do not try to cram in a midweek match between the second and third Tests – it is too big a distraction – and do not get greedy. I know South Africa could not see the recession coming when they were setting ticket prices but a week's wages is too much for anyone to pay and that is why so many grounds looked half-empty.

That said, it was the thrill of a lifetime. On the playing side it was the chance to work with some really great players and coaches. Travelling around from Rustenburg to Johannesburg, on to Bloemfontein, Durban, Cape Town and Pretoria before that final game in Johannesburg, I have never made so many new friends in such a short period. And, on reflection, it is nice to know it has helped change things for the better.